IRUS
HANSMA
A man listening to his times
1881 Fernand Léger was born on February 4, 1881 in Argentan (Orne). He is considered one of the leading figures in modern art. A painter, draftsman, illustrator, decorator, ceramist and also creator of tapestry cartoons and stained glass windows, his rich and coherent work is expressed throughout the first half of the 20th century.
1907 Fernand Léger settles at La Ruche in the artistic excitement of Montparnasse. He was very marked by the lessons of Cézanne and the same year, he discovered the cubism of Braque and Picasso which definitively guided his own style. F. Léger became friends with Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob, Guillaume Apollinaire, the painter Robert Delaunay, Marc Chagall, Chaïm Soutine… He created a painting based on contrasts of shapes and colors where each pictorial element opposes itself to all the others, Léger aspires, as he says, to “a balance between lines, shapes and colors”.
1913 Fernand Léger signs a first contract with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler .
1914 He leaves for the war in August, abruptly interrupting his research. The experience he had on the front had a profound impact on him and gave new strength to his work. He draws his daily life as a soldier on makeshift supports.
1917 He is reformed. He signed an important contract with Léonce Rosenberg.
1918 He illustrates Blaise Cendrars' book The End of the World filmed by Ange N.-D.
1919 He marries Jeanne Lohy.
1922 He seeks to express the modern world through various visual means. He multiplies collaborations: for the film by Abel Gance, La Roue, and creates the sets for L'In humaine by Marcel L'Herbier. With Rolf de Maré, founder of the Swedish Ballets, he successively created the costumes and sets for Skating Rink (1922) and La Création du monde (1923). This classic ballet is presented at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with Darius Milhaud for the music, Blaise Cendrars for the libretto, Fernand Léger for the sets and Jean Börlin for the choreography.
1923 His student Nadia Khodossievich, then wife of the Polish painter Stanislas Grabowski, becomes an assistant professor in his new Academy of Contemporary Art.
1924 He directed with Dudley Murphy the “first film without a script” Mechanical Ballet, this experience would encourage him to use the principle of the close-up in his works.
1936 Georges Bauquier becomes his student before becoming his assistant.
1940 Léger goes into exile in the United States. This American period is very rich, in particular, with Divers and Cyclists where he dissociates colors and shapes. He set up his studio in New York in the winter and in Rouses Point in the summer while teaching at Mills College in California.
1945 He returns to France. Léger joins the French Communist Party. He returned to his workshop on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and opened a new school. Driven by the ideal of art for all, he devotes himself to monumental works of sacred art (the Notre-Dame de Tout Grace church on the Assy plateau, the Sacré-Cœur church in Audincourt, etc. ) or public buildings (the University of Caracas, the UN Palace in New York, etc.).
1949 Léger works with the Brice workshop (Biot) to create polychrome ceramic sculptures.
1950 Tériade publishes his album Cirque in 1950. These years are marked by his series such as La Grande Parade and Les Constructeurs.
1952 Widowed for two years, he marries his former student Nadia.
1955 Fernand Léger died on August 17 in Gif-sur-Yvette (Essonne) and remains without direct descendants.
Manuel Litran, Paris-Match, Scoop
Ideal art for all
“Multiple originals” or real fake paintings
In the post-war years, the painters Jean Fautrier and his partner Jeanine Aeply developed a technique for reproducing works of art, the “multiple originals” which André Malraux ardently supported. The complex “Aeply process” combines several artisanal (chalcography, stencil, intaglio) and mechanical (lithography, photography) techniques for the same reproduction. Jeanine Aeply presents her copies as "almost real paintings", the artists themselves, Georges Braque in the lead, are unable to distinguish the canvas they painted from the reproduction, both the color and the material, the grain as well as the touch, are respected.
Jean Fautrier reproduces the greatest painters: Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Juan Gris, Camille Pissaro, Claude Monet and André Derain. Fernand Léger, keen to democratize the work of art and contribute to the influence of modern painting among the middle and working classes, participated in this enterprise, while taking great care to sign on the back the authentic work which served as a model. (See donation from Jean-Paul Ledeur).
At the same time, the publisher Guy Spitzer developed the principle of reproducing works of art using the “Aeply process”. Fernand Léger appears in the catalog with “The gray root”, an edition of 250 copies planned, countersigned by the artist.
These “multiple originals” which were so faithful were sometimes resold in France and abroad like the originals which had inspired them… Ultimately, they failed and were abandoned in the mid-fifties.
Some of these “multiple originals” still appear on the art market and their detection remains problematic!
Multiples (gouache stencils)
Stencils also allow the multiple reproduction of works on paper and as such represent a source of error in the qualification of a unique original work. Only an in-depth analysis of the layers allows the authentication of the work.